Category: Gov’t & Trade

On Election Day in 2002, when New Hampshire voters were going to the polls in a hotly contested Senate race, the phone lines in Democratic get-out-the-vote offices were jammed. . .

The Bush administration has spent a lot of time talking about mythical cases of voter fraud and election improprieties, but the New Hampshire phone jamming case was the real thing. Republican operatives hired an Idaho telemarketing firm to jam the lines to prevent people who needed help in voting from getting through. The scheme was a direct attack on American democracy. read more

Selective Prosecution, August 6, 2007

One part of the Justice Department mess that requires more scrutiny is the growing evidence that the department may have singled out people for criminal prosecution to help Republicans win elections. The House Judiciary Committee has begun investigating several cases that raise serious questions. The panel should determine what role politics played in all of them.

Putting political opponents in jail is the sort of thing that happens in third-world dictatorships. In the United States, prosecutions are supposed to be scrupulously nonpartisan. This principle appears to have broken down in Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department — where lawyers were improperly hired for nonpolitical jobs based on party membership, and United States attorneys were apparently fired for political reasons. read more

The country of India now has in its 60th year of independence, as of last Saturday, July 21, a woman president, and people in her hometown of Jalgaong are dancing in the streets! Social activists look to Ms. Patil for relief for women from centuries-old struggles related to gender issues such as dowry-related violence, murder, rape and domestic abuse.

In her new position, Ms. Pratibha Patil has the power to structure both state and local governments. Her government counterpart, the prime minister, is the holder of executive power for the state. Reuters article tells more. read more

Roberts said that because of Bush’s unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why “the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush’s follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year’s election.”

[But] Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. “Something’s in the works,” he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place. read more

Buffett, the third-richest man in the world, is supporting Democratic presidential hopeful in the upcoming elections, because he wants more equitable wealth distribution and taxataion systems in the US.

Buffet criticised the US tax system for allowing him to pay a lower rate than his secretary and his cleaner. Speaking at a fundraiser in New York for Senator Hillary Clinton, Mr Buffett, who is worth an estimated $52 billion (£26 billion), said . . . If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent. read more

Maybe Bush’s outrageous commutation of Scooter Libby’s will help some folks recognize that this president and his cronies have more than normal self-interest or operative pragmatic scheming in mind.

The oft-used term “neo-conservatives,” or “neo-cons,” is thrown around the identify the circles that helped lift this current administration to power . . . these are not just new conservatives . . . At the top, these people have a total overhaul of U.S. Constitutional government in mind. Bush and friends are the first administration that has achieved a level of power high enough to exhibit this. Their goal is the end of democracy as defined by the U.S. Constitution. read more

New Scientist reports that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act [GINA] won an overwhelming 420 to 3 majority vote in the House of Representatives. It will soon be illegal for an insurance company to charge higher rates to people genetically disposed to certain illnesses, and for applicants to be denied employment based on genetic test results.

That law will come into being as soon as Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, lifts the hold he has placed on the bill to delay its passage into the legislation archives. read more

“Conservatism has been killing Americans. The recent food safety crisis is only one case study. . .

The Associated Press studied the records and found that between 2003 and 2006 the Food and Drug Administration conducted 47 percent fewer safety inspections. FDA field offices have 12 percent fewer employees. Safety tests for food produced in the United States have gone down by three quarters—have almost ground to a halt—in the previous year alone.”

Utah County GOP Chairwoman Marian Monnahan says District 65 Chairman Don Larsen has proposed legislature urging the closing of national borders to illegal immigrants to “prevent the destruction of the U.S. by stealth invasion.”

“In order for Satan to establish his ‘New World Order’ and destroy the freedom of all people as predicted in the Scriptures, he must first destroy the U.S.,” his resolution states. “The mostly quiet and unspectacular invasion of illegal immigrants does not focus the attention of the nations the way open warfare does, but is all the more insidious for its stealth and innocuousness.” Jump to full article read more